Priorities and Waste Streams
November 5, 2009
It continually baffles me that not only are there lots of infertile couples desperate for a child, or an additional one, as well as couples desperate to adopt; yet there are huge barriers to adoption and millions of young women have abortions every year. I’m not fond of the idea of government subsidies for carrying children to term, but I would probably get behind some sort of free-market solution; and probably anything is better than the current situation. Yet many people my age are more concerned about where their styrofoam cup or plastic bottle might end up, because that might hypothetically hurt someone, or, heaven forbid, some polar bear, in a future generation. That’s considered being conscientious and socially just and politically aware.
Also, nearly everyone spends their most fertile, and possibly most productive, years locked up in a government school of one sort of another (I think many of our universities receive enough funding to be considered government schools, especially the so-called private universities that often get more federal funds than the public ones). Nearly always, one is being forced to work on something better learned on one’s own out of a goddamn book. Then many go off to work for a corporation–also a government entity, depending on your definition, or the military, which is a government entity by any definition. That’s also considered the responsible thing to do. Then women and men alike spend their thirties racing against the clock.
Am I the only one who thinks that things are considerably backasswards?
November 7, 2009 at 8:14 am
It sounds so simple- just link up women with unwanted pregnancies with couples wanting to adopt, and there is no doubt that many kids could be adopted this way.
However, most wouldn’t. Many women abort because they simply don’t want to go through pregnancy and childbirth, and wouldn’t want the children of their body raised by utter strangers in any case, no matter how nice, affluent, well-educated and otherwise “qualified” the prospective parents may appear. Remember Lisa Steinberg? How would you like to go through pregnancy and childbirth, then give the child up to these people just to have her returned to you in a casket 5 years later?
When you get into extremely personal matters like these, there are no simple, clean solutions.
However, you are correct in the basic sense, that such matters are best left to the individuals involved, rather than cadres of social workers and bureaucrats.